The Health Ministry will continue to treat the entire Viti Levu as an infected zone until there are no more cases picked up by the screening clinics, which are our major armor in the battle against the B1617 variant of COVID-19.

This comes as a 53-year old caretaker of the Ra Provincial Office, has tested positive, and there is to date no clear indication of how he may have got the virus and health officials are conducting contact tracing to see if he is linked with any of the recent cases.

The health officials are working on finding the source of his infection, and until it is confirmed, the theories will continue.

Health Permanent Secretary, Doctor James Fong, says this is of concern and the entire Viti Levu is for the moment a COVID-19 exposed zone.

“I have to assume that we have got exposure all over Viti Levu. I have to assume that. I cannot not assume it. It’s one of the reasons we have decided to set up screening clinics all over Viti Levu. We did not keep all our activity in Suva, Lautoka, Nausori, Lami right from the beginning, we erupted the screening clinics immediately because we anticipate we will find some cases.”

Doctor Fong says the screening clinics are needed and they are now starting to pay dividends.

“In fact I would have been disappointed if I didn’t find any case from the screening clinics over the last 24 hours and I was happy that we were actually beginning to pick up, at least we now have two more and they both came through the screening zones. It means the screening clinics will now start working and I expect the screening clinic to pick up more cases. That is just the nature of how the disease spreads and that is the nature a screening clinic is supposed to do.”

Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama wants to be sure this message reaches every Fijian who needs to hear it, so he has asked that this entire statement be translated into the vernacular languages.

Dr Fong has encouraged leaders looking to inspire urgency within their communities to share the messages, and then do one better by seeing the health measures enacted at the community level.

Fiji has had 111 cases since the first detection last year, March 19th.

We now have 44 active cases, five older border quarantine cases, 13 recent quarantine cases and 25 locally transmitted cases with one under investigation of how he got infected.